It has been known for a motor vehicle, such as an automobile or a light truck, to employ, at each front wheel or at each rear wheel, a suspension system comprising an upper stabilizer bar, a lower control element, such as a control arm or an axle housing bracket, and an end link, which links one end of the upper stabilizer bar to the lower control element, so as to transmit vertical forces between the control element and the stabilizer bar.
Such a system comprising an upper stabilizer bar, a lower control arm, and an end link has been employed, at each front wheel, on certain CAMERO.TM. and FIREBIRD.TM. automobiles sold by General Motors Corporation, Chevrolet Motor Division, Detroit, Mich. Vittone U.S. Pat. No. 3,315,952 discloses such a system comprising an upper stabilizer bar, an axle housing bracket, and an end link, at each rear wheel of an automobile. In Takadera et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,621,831 and Saotome et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,664,408, more complex systems comprising end links, or similar devices, are disclosed.
Typically, as known heretofore, the end link comprises eleven elements, namely a bolt having a head and having a shank with a threaded end, a nut therefor, a tubular sleeve, four annular washers, and four annular grommets. Each grommet has a larger end and a smaller end, which forms a tubular extension of the grommet, and is made of an elastomeric material, such as a natural or synthetic rubber.
Such a link is assembled by extending the bolt shank successively through a first washer, a first grommet and a second grommet, a second washer, the sleeve, a third washer, a third grommet and a fourth grommet, and a fourth washer, and threading the nut onto the threaded end of the bolt shank. The respective grommets must be axially oriented such that the tubular extensions of the first and second grommets face each other and such that the tubular extensions of the third and fourth grommets face each other.
Such a link is connected to a stabilizer bar, which is formed with an aperture of a suitable diameter near one end, and to a control element, which also is formed with such an aperture, as the end link is assembled, by causing the tubular extensions of the first and second grommets to extend axially, from opposite directions, into one such aperture, as the bolt shank is extended through the first and second grommets, and causing the tubular extensions of the third and fourth grommets to extend axially, from opposite directions, into the other aperture, as the bolt shank is extended through the third and fourth grommets.
Assembly of such a link and connection of such a link to a stabilizer bar and to a control element, as described above, are complicated tasks, which require a worker to handle eleven parts of the end link, and which are susceptible to some mistakes due to omission of parts, particularly washers, or to inversion of grommets in an axial sense. Such mistakes can be very expensive to rectify, particularly in a motor vehicle assembly plant.
There has been a need heretofore to improve such a link and methods for assembling such a link and for connecting such a link to a stabilizer bar and to a control element, such as a control arm or an axial housing bracket, so as to facilitate proper assembly and proper connection.